


Altered Fate

by Nachhall



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Crosswinds: Granblue Fantasy Tarot, Gen, but theres some references, i was gonna use shinbaha backstory and stuff but then decided not to, since i was too lazy to go back and find albert's old events, these boys are both idiots, you'll understand if youve read the event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 20:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15956726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nachhall/pseuds/Nachhall
Summary: The beginning, a middle, and an end to the short lives they led together.





	Altered Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative title: keeping the glittering casket and giving up the pearls
> 
> Written for Albert, as the Seven of Wands.  
> Challenge, competition, perseverance / Giving up, overwhelmed, overly protective

 

In the scarlet light of the setting sun, with the wind grazing their cheeks and the smell of rain in the air, Albert looks at the lands around him, at Mina, at Yurius, and thinks ’precious’. For it is their presence that spurs him on, to raise his blade and claim the title of ’Knight’, of ’protector’, and it is their presence that lets him persevere onwards. When he lays a hand on Hauteclaire’s hilt, the blade’s honed edge catches the sun’s rays, glinting gold and crimson.

\-------------------------------------------

  1. perseverance



_In the beginning, there was no hatred, nor jealousy and distrust. There was no Knights of Levin, or Lacrimas, or Skyblades. It was only them, Albert and Yurius, and the blood pact and promise that bound them together in the present and into their future._  
He remembers Yurius, back in their youth.  
Before, when he still had the freedom to explore the depths of the castle and run through the dew-soaked fields, his mother had introduced him to Yurius. _He needs someone to play with_ , his mother had whispered to him, as she gazed sadly at the weeping boy kneeling at the foot of his own mother’s bed. Through the years, He had dared not ask Yurius if he missed his mother; if he longed for her touch and her assurances and her hugs. There never was any need to.

To Albert, Yurius was someone to protect. Not quite as strong as him, nor as swift or sturdy. Small hands and delicate features, not quite meant for the blistering sword practices they endured, the daily spars they pursued.  
But no sympathies were held for bastard children in this castle, for their very existence stained one’s name and honour, burns their paths to fortune and status and fame. When Yurius cried, people jeered. When he fell down defeated, people mocked him. _It is through no fault of his own_ , his mother had told him in hushed tones, when Albert had come to her as a child, befuddled and curious. _His parents were simply foolish, and it is he who must bear the burden of their mistake._

Albert knows the story just like every other child in the court, snippets taken from rumours and half whispered giggles, hidden behind the fans of the gossiping Ladies; speculations all dissected and pieced together with morbid curiosity: of a foolish prince who had bedded a maid with no intention of marrying her, who then bore her son out of wedlock and died from shame.  
But Albert had watched Yurius stand up, bruised and beaten and sword still raised high, had watched him wipe away the tears and straighten his back and spurn those who laughed. In the end, Yurius, for all his delicate features and scholarly hands, was as tenacious as the storms that wreathed their small kingdom, and Albert watches him and learns.

\-------------------------------------------

  1. challenge



_ Yurius’ search for knowledge was everlasting, manifested in mountains of tomes upon dusty shelves, the low burning flame of an oil lamp, culminating in sheaves of parchment turned black with ink, smeared fingers, and scholarly hands. _

If it were only knowledge that Yurius had strived for, then Albert would not have begrudged him it. The ruling of a kingdom required more than the power to oppress, the slippery hold of a tyrant’s hand. If this small kingdom of theirs, so vulnerable, wreathed in its persistent storms, were to prosper, a wise leader was vital. 

And in turn, Albert trained. If his friend were to move upwards, then he would accompany him, through life’s many challenges and oppositions. The drive to further himself, become stronger, resulted in a series of promotions, further and further upwards as he pulled himself to the top. If only so that when Yurius inevitably joined him, it would be at the very peak of their small world like he deserved.

But no matter how many years passed, how much Yurius’s studies contributed to their technology and their sciences, he was still only a bastard child and a stain upon the Prince’s - now King’s - honor. Their King favoured glory and chivalry and tales of knightly battles, and Albert knew, from the distance growing between him and Yurius, that the blatant favoritism and the glaring criticism was taking its toll.

He watches from behind the tall pillars of the throne room, as Yurius pleads with the King to entrust him with the Skyblade and Astral Void Lacrima; he continues watching as the King spits on his friend’s work, tramples on his dreams.  _ A bastard son, born from a lowly maid, dare to ask for Levin’s national treasures?  _ There is no hiding the resentment in the King’s tone, born from the constant reminder of his mistake near over two decades ago. 

But Albert understands the King’s wariness, misguided and misinformed it may be. As the years continue on and the days pass through the seasons, he sees the manic light in Yurius’s clear eyes transform him. It is never more blatant than when he watches his friend in the waning candlelight, oil burning too low to be serviceable: Yurius, with his amber eyes burning gold with a dark hunger, tempered with the dark shadows of the possessed. The sight of his friend, hunched over papers with the dark ink still slick and wet, and the low light casting shadows on his youthful face, sends shivers up Albert’s spine and pulls attention to the ever-present blade strapped to his side. He had raised this very same blade once before in defense of the kingdom, with naught but the grim shroud of acceptance as he had willingly drenched his hands in his own father’s blood. 

The sight of Yurius’s glittering eyes fills him with a sense of foreboding, and reluctantly, he hones his blade and waits for the inevitable. 

\-------------------------------------------

iii.given up

_ In the bright light of the sun, where there were no rain-heavy clouds or streaks of lightning, the Skyblade, Hauteclaire, still did not gleam in the light. The blade was never meant to reflect natural light, but rather the strings and ties that held people close. Albert looks back at Levin, at the far-distant crumbling walls of the grand castle, and bows his head. Not for the spiteful king, but for his best friend and the promise he swore on broken bonds. _

Hauteclaire’s weight at his side is heavy, a gruelling and dark reminder of what he had willingly left behind. This crew upon the Grandcypher is a balm onto the guilt in his chest, a reminder of the rare sun showers in Levin, and the near-forgotten memories of a time where both he and Yurius held no blame for the other. He had strayed his blade for too long, left his friend in a shattered castle with naught but the malignant company of a beast who had taken and changed and twisted his mind. 

_ There was no helping it, there was nothing to be done. This was a consequence he had to face, brought on by his ignorance and his passive stance. He escaped Levin in order to draft plans and learn of ways to rescue his friend from the hold of the Lacrima, of the beast. _ Excuses felt like crumbled ash upon his tongue, the bitter scent of ozone and metal. The gleam of Hauteclaire’s blade dimmed further as the cloud-wreathed island of Levin drew close, the distant claps of thunder and sharp cracks of lightning ringing in Albert’s ears.  

The excuses of a coward, a Knight who ran away from his duty out of sentimental reasons and an inability to follow through. The tragedy of Levin would have been ended, if he only had the courage to slide his blade across Yurius’ throat that fateful day, if only he were not swayed by the ties that had held them together for so long. In the end, there was no helping it. As he steps onto the ground of the kingdom he had abandoned for years, the last light upon Hauteclaire’s formerly gleaming edge went dark. 

\-------------------------------------

iiii. overwhelmed

_ The streets were quiet, the skies were dark, and the castle in the distance loomed like the horrors and dark past that Albert had been so afraid of confronting.  _

The lightning guides him on his way to the looming darkness that was once the grand palace of Levin. The howling winds of the storm push at his back, the roar of the thunder becomes a voice that urges him on as Albert trudges through the fields that he and Yurius had played in so long ago, and further past the ruined training grounds and the ruined buildings of the fallen turrets and towers that had once been their refuge from the courts’ malignant atmosphere. Each echoing step towards the throne room, past abandoned rooms and crumbled columns and the desecrated remains of the grand hallways and ball rooms turns into a chant, a reminder. Responsibility over sentiment, sworn oaths of loyalty over the sworn oaths of friendship and bonds. 

His steps were steady, and the path he takes is easily followed from years of familiarity and endless repetition. In the end, responsibility fell upon him to rectify his own mistakes, for though it was Yurius that had slowly harboured dark feelings, the fault was his for his ignorance and lack of action on his own friend’s behalf. 

As he steps into the castles shattered throne room, the echoes to the steps he takes is not unheard. In this throne room where the light shines pale and casts draping shadows across all it touches, Albert casts a glance at the blade in his hand, and ponders how everything could have been different, could have been changed. 

He meets the manic, dark amber of Yurius’s clouded eyes, takes in the blue veins and the pale hair and the mockery of Yurius’s fond smirk; with a mustered resolve and the ominous ring of metal, Albert unsheathes his blade.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Crosswinds: Granblue Fantasy Tarot! 
> 
> I know the story was a bit weird since I decided to take a bit of stuff from the albert event, from shinbaha, and made the rest up myself to fill in the holes but I hope it was enjoyable /o/ 
> 
> The story was supposed to be focused on Albert, but with how much Albert thought abt Yurius, it might as well have been about him instead www
> 
> As an added note, the alternative title refers to someone having bad judgement.


End file.
